How @Starkkates Reaches 360,000 Followers on Alternative TikTok

@Starkkates Tiktok page [Credit: Starkkates]

(SAN ANTONIO) — Actress and cosplayer Starkkates has been a content creator for the app TikTok since June 2018, with a following of more than 362,000 and 1,098 videos to her name.  

TikTok was designed with Gen Z and Millennials in mind, taking after the structure of previous Musical.ly and Vine apps to keep the experience familiar and yet exciting. User content can cover anything from daily life, art, cosplay, makeup, dance, lip-syncing, etc. and is based on people’s likes and dislikes. 

Starkkates is famous for her cosplay and is considered part of the alternative side of TikTok which features non-mainstream content for LGBTQ followers, fans of emo, punk and drag, and cosplayers. Thanks to its diversity, the 3 to 15-second app has become part of Gen Z’s and Millennials’ digital culture , providing them a platform to connect with people from all over the world. 

The Click: What do you love most about TikTok?

Starkkates: “The thing I love most about TikTok is the community. I have made so, so, so many friends, more than I think in ‘real life.’ I met my best friend in the whole world on TikTok. The people you meet are everything. I also just love the outlet. I love being able to be creative on this platform.”

The Click: I know you use it to promote your stories and ideas but what exactly brought you to TikTok?

Starkkates: “I joined in June 2019 just for fun, but I made one video as my OC (Original Character) Julia and it blew up, mostly because people were confused, but there was a community of other Marvel kids and I felt accepted there.”

The Click: How do you think having this platform will shape you in the future? What are you hoping to get out of it? 

Starkkates: “I look at this platform as a stepping stone for my acting career. That’s where I’m hoping this will lead. I want to be an actress, on film and on stage, and I just hope that TikTok can act as a kind of portfolio of my acting, and I hope I grow as time goes on.”

TikTok is a content sharing app that was modeled after a rival app called Musical.ly. In 2014, Musical.ly was created to let teenagers create videos where they could lip-sync and dance to popular songs. By mid-2017, the app had over 200 Million users. Then in 2016, a Beijing-based app developer ByteDance created Douyin. Initially launched only in China, Douyin was renamed TikTok for international appeal. By late 2017, ByteDance bought Musical.ly for $800 Million and a year later merged the two apps into one under the name TikTok. 

As of September 2020, it hosts 800 million active users and young content creators.